WordPress Core Files can be set up in English OR German (or any other Language). I can assist with initial setup and help with getting you started. You only need to have or pay a Hosting Account and your Domain Name.You can host your Site at your preferred Hosting Company or I can provide Hosting at € 60.00 PER YEAR. A Domain Name (if you do not have one) costs € 16.00 PER YEAR.

How to Setup a Professional Email Address with Gmail and G Suite

After creating a website, the first thing every business owner needs is a professional email address with their business name in it.

A professional email address will help you win trust when dealing with other businesses and customers.

G Suite is Google’s productivity suite that allows you to use Gmail with your own professional email address. In this article, we will show you how to setup a professional custom branded email address with Gmail and G Suite.

What is a Professional Email Address?

A professional email address is the one that has your business name in it. For example, john@myphotostudio.com is a professional email address.

Email accounts on free email services like john.photographer@gmail.com are not good for business because they do not look professional. Your customers and other businesses will find a professional email address more trustworthy.

For a professional email address, you will need a domain name and a website. We have step by step guides on how to choose a domain name and how to quickly make a website.

If you already have a domain name and a website, then you are all set to have your own professional email address.Why Use G Suite for Professional Branded Email Address?

You might be thinking why use G Suite when most WordPress hosting companies offer unlimited email accounts with your own domain name?

Email is one of the most important communication tool for business owners. If you miss an important email, then it can hurt your business.

Most web hosting email servers are unreliable, restrictive, isolated, and less secure. You wouldn’t even know if the email you sent was actually delivered.

This is where G Suite and Gmail comes in.

Gmail is the industry leader in email with 1.5 billion monthly active users. G Suite is Google’s productivity app suite for business owners which includes Gmail and is already used by over 4 million businesses and 80 million students / educators.

G Suite works with your own domain name, which allows you to use Gmail to create your professional branded email address.

Here are some of the benefits of using G Suite and Gmail for a professional email address:

Professional business email address on your own domain.
Gmail’s rock solid security and spam filters.
30 GB – Double the storage of a free Gmail Account.
Manage email even when offline using Gmail app on mobile devices.
Works anywhere web, mobile, tablet, you name it.
Works great with Outlook and can even sync old Outlook accounts.
Each user can have up to 30 email aliases.
Use Google Calendar, Google Hangouts for chat, video, and voice calls on your own business email address.
No advertisements and 24/7 professional support whenever you need help.
Works seamlessly with your WordPress site.
Most important of all, high deliverability, no delays, no ending up in spam folder.

Now that you know why using G Suite for professional emails is important, let’s take a look at how to set up a branded professional email address with G Suite.

Editor’s Note: We use G Suite for all of our professional email addresses and can honestly say it’s the best.Setting up a Professional Email Address with Gmail (G Suite)

It costs around $5/month for each user. If you pay annually, then you get 2 months free ($50/year per user).

G Suite also offers a free 14-day trial, which allows you to test drive everything before you make up your mind. Basically its all the powerful features you’re used to of Gmail, Drive, Calendar, etc (but now it’s for your business).

Simply visit the G Suite website and click on the Get Started button for the plan you want to use.
Next, you need to enter your business name, the number of employees, and the country where you are located. You can choose just yourself for 1 user account, or choose the number of employees.

On the next step, you will be asked to enter your personal contact information including name and email address.
After that, you will be asked to choose a domain name. If you already have a domain name, then click on ‘Yes I have one I can use’. Otherwise, click on ‘No, I need one’ to register a domain name.
If you need to register a new domain name, then you will be charged separately for registering a new domain name (tip: here’s how to register a domain name for free).

If you are using an existing domain name, then you will need to verify ownership of the domain name. We’ll show you how to do that later in this article.

In the next step, you will be asked to create your G Suite user account by entering a username and password.

This username will also be your first professional email address, so you need to choose a username that you want to use as your professional email address.
You have successfully created your G Suite account. You can now click on the ‘Go to Setup’ button
On the setup screen, you will be asked to add more people to your account. If you want to create more accounts for your employees or departments, then you can do that here.

You can also just click on ‘I have added all user email addresses’ and click on the next button.

Remember, you can always add more users to your account and create their email addresses later when needed.
If you registered your domain name elsewhere, then you will now be asked to verify your ownership of the domain name.
After that you will see a HTML code snippet that you need to add to your website.
There are other ways to verify your website ownership as well. You can upload a HTML file to your website using an FTP client or file manager app in your hosting account dashboard.

If you don’t have a website, then you can use also use the MX Record method. You will see step by step instructions to do that once you choose this method.

For the sake of this tutorial, we are assuming that you already have a WordPress blog, and we will show you how to add the verification HTML code snippet in WordPress.

Switch to the WordPress admin area in a new browser tab to install and activate the Insert Headers and Footer plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, go to Settings » Insert Headers and Footer page and paste the HTML code you copied from G Suite under the ‘Scripts in Header’ section.
Don’t forget to click on the ‘Save’ button to store your settings.

Now switch back to your G Suite setup screen and click on the checkbox that says ‘I added the meta tag to my homepage’.
Next, you will be asked to enter MX record entries for your domain name.

Note: You only need to add MX records if you have an existing domain name and website. Users who registered their domain names via Google, don’t need to add MX records.

Since your domain name is not registered with Google, your emails will reach your domain name, but not to the Google servers.

You will need to set up the right MX records on your domain name settings, so Google’s servers can send and receive emails for your business.

To do that, you will need to login to your web hosting account, or your domain registrars account.

We will show you how to add MX records in Bluehost, but the basic concept is the same on all hosts and domain registrars. Basically, you will be looking for DNS settings under your domain name.

Login to your Bluehost hosting dashboard and click on ‘Domains’. On the next page, select your domain name and then click on the ‘Manage’ link next to DNS Zone Editor option.
Bluehost will now open your DNS zone editor. You need to switch back to your G Suite setup screen and check the box that says ‘I have opened the control panel of my domain name’.

It will now show you the MX records that you need to enter. You will also see a link to the documentation which shows you how to add these records to dozens of hosting and domain services provider.

Here is how you will add this information to your Bluehost DNS settings:
Click on ‘Add Record’ button to save it. After that, repeat the process to add all five lines as MX records.

Once you are finished, switch back to G Suite setup and check the box next to ‘I created the new MX records’.
You will be asked to delete any existing MX records still pointing to your website hosting or domain name registrar.

To do this, you need to switch back to your DNS zone editor and scroll down to the MX records section. You will see the MX records you created earlier along with an older MX record still pointing to your website.
Click on the delete button next to the old MX record to delete it.

After that, switch back to the G Suite setup screen and check the box that says ‘I deleted existing MX records’.
You will now be asked to save your MX records. For some providers, once you add MX records they are already saved, for others you may need to manually save MX records.

Once you have saved MX records, check the box that says ‘I have saved MX records’ in G Suite setup.
After that, you need to click on ‘Verify domain and setup email’ button to exit the setup wizard.Using Your Professional Email with G Suite and Gmail

Your email account works like any other Gmail account. You can access it by visiting Gmail Website and sign in with your email address, e.g. john@yourdomain.com.

You can also manage your G Suite account by visiting the admin console.
This is where you can add/remove new users to your domain name. Each of your users will have 30 GB storage and all the same features, but they will not have access to the admin console. You can remove those users at any time you want.Troubleshooting G Suite Domain Setup

It is likely that your web host may not be using a dashboard like we have shown in the screenshots above.

G Suite has detailed documentation for many of the popular web hosting and domain registration service providers. Visit, set up MX records (Hosts specific steps) page and then locate your domain registrar or web host from the list.

If you do not find your service provider in the list, then you can ask them directly to help you setup G Suite for your domain name.

Ideal Layout Theme for Construction Companies and Related Business’s

Construction is premium made WordPress Theme specifically for construction, building companies, architecture businesses and those that offer building services. The theme comes pre-packed with a most popular drag and drop page builder – Visual Composer. so that you can easily move/change/edit your layout the way you like

What Kind of SEO Package Do You Need?

National SEO & Local SEO are very different, and they require specialized strategies.
Choose Local SEO Package if you have a small business that serves clients in your area only.
Choose National SEO Package if your business serves clients nationwide or world-wide.

Every Website Owner wants to be found on Google (don’t forget Bing and Yahoo etc.) or be on Page 1 of the Search Engines Results.
There are many Companies promising you Page One Rank on Google but the Reality is, there is only room for 20 or 30 Results on Page One and realistically NOT everybody can be there!
Personally I think Page One cannot be promised BUT there are a few things one can do to improve the Ranking of your Website.
Some Areas we have Control over and can adjust to improve Website Ranking such as Image Optimization, Page Loading Time, Clean Code, User Experience i.e. Navigation and so on, but some other Areas are beyond our Control such as Age of Domain Name, Server Response Time, Code of external links such as Google Maps or Facebook.
Do you want to be found locally or nationally or worldwide?
If you provide a Plumbing Service for example you will want to be found locally as it is highly unlikely that a Customer in another Country will ask for a Quote. Key Cutting Service is another example of a local Business.
But some E Commerce Site should be found internationally as you could sell Items from South Africa to a Customer in the UK.
Would you like a quote for your Website? Fill out the Form as best as you can with as many keywords and other Info and I will come back to you as soon as possible.
Seo work is NOT a one day job but requires at least a month of A/B Test and Analyzing. Results are also NOT immediately visible as the Search Engine will need to re-index your Site.

Your Name (required)

Your Email (required)

Subject

The Website you need Help with

Keywords you want to be found for(separate single words with comma)

Anything else you can tell me about your WebsiteAnti Spam QuestionWhich is bigger, 5 or 9?
This form collects your name and email so that we can contact you if necessary.

PLEASE TICK THE BOX TO THE LEFT.I consent to having this website store my submitted information so they can respond to my inquiry.

Optimize your Images before you upload

It is a good idea to pre-format images before they are uploaded to the website. This ensures that the image files are transferred in the quickest time, using the least amount of bandwidth and taking up the least amount of space on the server, potentially saving you time and money.

This is particularly important when you are dealing with a large number of images, either for galleries or product databases.

Your images may be supplied to you by your suppliers or a third party photographer. We recommend that you pass on the following specifications to ensure that your images are provided to you in the correct format.

Format

These formats are the most preferred file types you can use to post images:

JPEG – An old file type which has become the standard image of the Internet. JPEG images are compressed to give you quality images minus the bulk. Useful for large and medium-sized product or post images and photographs.

GIF – Lower quality images used for simpler images such as icons. GIF’s can also support animations. GIF’s must never be used for product images, or larger and more complex images and photos, such as posters and artworks. It is best used for line arts with solid areas of the same color, such as logos

PNG – Another popular file type for images, PNG is often larger than both GIF and JPEG as these compresses photos without losing detail. They have more colors than GIF, and does not degrade over time with multiple saves, unlike JPEG. Often, they are used for high quality company logos, or product images which require a transparent background. Do note that some older browsers don’t completely support this filetype.

File and Image Size

For optimal website loading

Uploaded images must (ideally) be less than 500 kilobytes (0.5 MB) in size. Images that are more than 20MB in file size may not be processed by the website, or may take a long time to load, which could deter customers from your site.

Image Size Recommendations

Ensure that image sizes are within post display area. For instance, if your website post’s display area is around 700px wide, your full-sized images should have a width of 700px or lower in order for it to fit your website display.

We recommend that images are sized and optimised to a format suitable for its use.

It is important to note, that when preparing images for your products, to ensure that the dimensions are all the same. For example, it is best to have all portrait images or all landscape images or all square images. If you have a mix of all three then the product category pages are not going to look uniform and tidy.

NOTE: Images can only be scaled down, not enlarged. If you enlarge a previously scaled down image, you’ll get a pixelated (grainy) version of that image.

Colour mode

If you are providing images in a JPEG format, you need to ensure that the colour mode is set to “RGB” as opposed to CMYK. Software designed for print graphics such as Photoshop allows you to export images in a “CMYK” colour mode. This mode is specifically for print and the web browser will display it differently, usually the colours in a CMYK JPEG will display much “brighter”.

Resolution

72 pixels / inch – The standard resolution for screen display.

Optimisation

If your images are to be saved in a JPEG format you will have the option of compressing the images. This compression is measured on a 1-100 or a 1-10 scale, depending on the software that you are using to format your images. 100 representing high quality but larger file size and 1 low quality and small file size.

When saving an image for web use, choose image quality of 60 – 80.
You will find images saved at less than 60 will have a noticeable blur but be small in file size. Images saved at 80 or greater will appear much sharper but the file size will be significantly higher.

Aspect Ratio

Aspect ratio is the proportional relationship between an image’s width or height. Simply put, it’s the width to height (width/height) ratio of the image.

Certain platforms automatically adjust, or simply allows you to adjust the aspect ratio of an uploaded thumbnail or collection images. Squarespace, for instance, lets you crop collection images to aspect ratio, while Zest generally has a fixed width for thumbnail images.

However, for platforms like Shopify, you will need to edit the aspect ratio using a third party photo editing tool before uploading your images to your e-commerce store, if you want your product images to appear in the same size.

Image Thumbnails

Depending on the platform your website runs on, or how it is set up, your product images can get automatically cropped as thumbnail images for your gallery or your product collection.
In some instances, your images will get zoomed in and cropped.

If you would like the thumbnail to show the subject matter in its entirety, you can add white spaces on the image sides. By adding a white space around the image, it retains the entire subject when it gets cropped into a thumbnail image for your collection or gallery.

Naming Convention

Image file names should have names that are alphanumeric only, with no characters such as $ or #. Instead of having spaces in the image name, use an underscore or dash instead eg. ideal_image_name.jpg

To improve your search engine rankings and make your images easier to manage, name images using relevant keywords. IE for the image of a children’s book, instead of using the names from the camera eg IMG0637.jpg rename it to be the full name of the book “the-cat-in-the-hat.jpg”

Image Alt Tags

Alt Tags (Alternative Tags) are designed to explain the details of an image for the users who can’t or choose not to view images on their browsers. Alt tags also help search engines understand the image content and index it properly for search results.

When processing large numbers of images use batch processing functions, supported by some advanced image edit software. Please see the help files of your image edit software for support and more information about this.

Important information regarding cases involving UK users

On 29 March 2019, the United Kingdom will withdraw from the European Union. In the event that no withdrawal agreement will be in place on that date (so-called “no deal-Brexit”), the UK’s withdrawal will have the following impact on the use of the European ODR platform:

After 29 March 2019

Consumers resident in the UK will no longer be able to submit a new complaint on the ODR platform. They will also not be able to act on any ongoing cases in the platform, whether to send it to a dispute resolution body, contact a UK ODR advisor, or receive an outcome.

Consumers resident in the EU or Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein will no longer be able to use the ODR platform to complain about a UK trader or send their case to a UK dispute resolution body.

Traders established in the UK will no longer be able to access their ODR dashboard.

Traders established in the EU or Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein will not be able to act on any ongoing cases concerning UK consumers in the platform or suggest UK dispute resolution bodies.

All users can no longer export any relevant complaint data concerning UK consumers or traders from their dashboard. Users have the possibility to export relevant complaint data before 29 March 2019.

All users will not be able to contact the UK ODR advisor. Please contact them before 29 March 2019.

Email Spam-the Never ending Cat and Mouse Game

Today – as before – there is plenty of spam on social networks and in other types of online marketing, but most of us probably think of email when talking about spam. If you’re like me, battling email spam is a never-ending game of cat and mouse — tweaking spam filter settings, blacklisting and whitelisting domains, deleting emails that reach the In box, etc.
If your Website is build on the WordPress CMS System and you are using the popular Contact Form 7 Plugin for your Contact Form then here are some additional solutions apart from the build in re Captcha Integration.

First off – Should You use all the anti-spam methods recommended here?

In a word, no. I do NOT recommend that you implement ALL of the methods suggested in this article. A WordPress website should be kept as clean and minimal as possible behind the scenes, and you should not install unnecessary plugins.
Instead, I recommend using trial and error to experiment with these solutions – whether you’re a WordPress expert or a novice.If you need Help with any of these methods please contact me. Track how much contact form spam you receive after implementing one or two methods, and make changes until you are happy. Install Akismet as a starting point, and take it from there.

Using Contact Form 7’s in-built anti-spam measures

You’ll find a lot of articles recommending CAPTCHA and quiz plugins that work with Contact Form 7. Most of these are unnecessary as it’s better to use the features already built into the Contact Form 7 WordPress plugin.

Quiz

Simple quizzes are becoming a popular way to combat contact form spam. They work by asking the user a simple question such as “Which is bigger, 2 or 8?” Bots can’t answer this question. As a result, only people who enter the correct response can submit the contact form.

To add a quiz, edit your contact form and click the Generate Tag dropdown. Paste the shortcode that appears below into your contact form. It will look something like this:

[quiz capital-quiz "Which is bigger, 2 or 8?|8"]

2. Minimum character count

The WordPress website featured in this article received a lot of spam contact forms with 2-digit messages – usually a number. I have no idea what they were trying to achieve, but it’s obviously a popular type of spam at the moment.

If all your spam messages follow an obvious pattern, you can block them by setting up your contact form to block messages that meet this pattern. In this case, I used the Max and Min Length options in Contact Form 7 to require messages to be more than 20 characters long. Genuine inquiries will usually provide more than 20 characters, so this blocks bots without frustrating real users.

The Message/Comments field will look something like this:

[textarea* your-message minlength:20 maxlength:500]

3. Akismet

Akismet has a reputation as the best WordPress anti-spam plugin. Not everyone knows that it works with Contact Form 7 as well as blog comments.

Once you have activated the Akismet WordPress plugin and followed the on-screen instructions to add your API key (free for non-profit-making website, small monthly fee for business sites), you need to do a bit of extra config to make it talk to Contact Form 7 – see https://contactform7.com/spam-filtering-with-akismet/.

In my tests, Akismet stopped about 70% of the Contact Form 7 spam but not all of it. It worked well in conjunction with some of the other solutions mentioned in this article.

4. Contact Form 7 Honeypot

Contact Form 7 Honeypot is a WordPress plugin that adds a hidden field to your contact form. Real users won’t complete it because the field is invisible. However bots won’t know this and will fill it in. This allows the plugin to recognize them as bots and block their submission.

After you have installed and activated the Contact Form 7 Honeypot WordPress plugin, use the Generate Tag option to create a honeypot shortcode to insert into your contact form. It will look something like this (Contact Form 7 recommend changing the ID to something unique, so replace 531 with something else):

5. Really Simple CAPTCHA

The Really Simple CAPTCHA WordPress plugin was created by the developer of Contact Form 7 so they work together seamlessly. The plugin allows you to add a CAPTCHA to your contact form. It’s designed to prevent bots from submitting forms on your WordPress website.

Once you have installed and activated Really Simple CAPTCHA, insert a CAPTCHA tag into your Contact Form 7 form. (Click the Generate Tag dropdown to see the available options and create a customized tag to paste into your form.) It will look something like this:

Please note that CAPTCHAs are becoming slightly old fashioned and are not great for user-experience. They also require particular features to be enabled on your server, which may not be in place for your WordPress website.

I would recommend adding a quiz first (see above), and only trying CAPTCHA if this doesn’t work. The two methods basically do the same thing. They prevent automated bots from submitting your website contact form – so you shouldn’t need both.

If you just want to add one method to reduce Contact Form 7 spam, then I recommend Akismet. This is the best standalone solution as it’s so powerful and comprehensive. You can use it whether you’re a WordPress expert or a beginner. It can make a real difference to your WordPress contact form spam.

Whilst most people are familiar with GPS Failures , there are also many Google Translate Failures and SOME turn out to be quite funny, even embarrassing for the Website Owner.
If you have and Estate Agency Website advertising Property to a multi national potential Client Base do you REALLY want to rely on Google Translate to advertise your Properties?
Google Translate HAS become better over time and your Website Visitors will probably get the general meaning of the the translate, BUT often the wording is wrong way round or the sentencing does not make much sense to native speakers.

Need Website Administrator?

Do you need somebody to look after your existing Website-update content, upload images, change colors once a week, or month or once off? I can take that time consuming task off you for a very reasonable fee.Contact me to discuss your needs.

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